Talking Back

To the Editor:

I enjoyed “Don’t Box Me In” (February 2006), but read with interest that the brown-bag appeal was “pioneered” by City Harvest in the mid-1990s. In about 1989, I used a brown-bag mailing to invite donors to take their lunch to work and donate what they would have paid for a day’s lunch, or a week’s worth, or the cost of taking the whole office gang out. This
appeal benefitted people with developmental disabilities, served by The Arc of Multnomah County in Portland, Ore., for 10 years running. Our donors knew when to expect the appeal and, of course, it was immediately recognizable to them. I’m not certain that ours was even the first, but it was certainly earlier than that started by City Harvest in the mid-1990s.